Soul Society serves up refreshments with style

SYRACUSE — Salon owner Michaela Kawryga recognized a need for a convenient place downtown for her and her stylists to get quick, nutritious refreshments, so she started a second business to do just that. In 2022, Kawryga opened Soul Society, a juice bar and raw café, in a space at 230 West Genesee St., adjoining her already-existing beauty and wellness studio called The Emerson. “As stylists, we’re on our feet all day,” Kawryga said of the situation that led to what would become her second business. “We do weddings; we’re working long hours, back-to-back-to-back. [I wondered] how can I get my nutrients quickly?” The answer Kawryga arrived at was juice and smoothies. She explained, “Working downtown for the past 10 years, we haven’t had a ton of places that did fresh-pressed juice and only fresh-pressed juice. So that’s the backbone of how I kind of ran myself. So, I was like, okay, let me implement that in the salon so that when people are sitting, they’re not Grubhub-ing, you know — pizza or Starbucks or Five Guys. They can walk over, pick something out. They know it’s going to be fresh. They can watch us make it.” An opportunity to make that vision a reality arose when a space next to the salon she had operated at 230 West Genesee St. since 2020 became available. Kawryga took the space for her new business idea. “I kind of just got to the point in my career where I was like, I’m going to try this out and I’m going to try and do it my way and I’m just going to take a leap. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.” The end result was Soul Society — a juice bar and café that serves an array of beverages ranging from fresh-pressed juices to lattes; food options including “small bites,” charcuterie, salads, and sandwiches; a wide variety of smoothies; as well as alcoholic beverage options. While the cafe does no cooking, everything is freshly prepared. In addition to serving food and beverages, Soul Society also functions as an event venue. “We have bridal showers, baby showers, bridal parties,” Kawryga said. “We’ve had networking events. We’ve worked with the United Way. We do yoga once a month.” The result of the combined salon/juice bar/event space approach has led to a diverse customer base. According to Kawryga, her customers represent “a broad demographic” including parents who might bring their children for a quick snack, older patrons in search of a smoothie, downtown-office workers, and Syracuse University students looking for a place to hang out. Soul Society is physically joined to The Emerson salon in a space totaling about 7,000 square feet. The two businesses have separate entrances but connect in the interior, allowing for a number of synergies between them. The combined operation employs 17 people. Kawryga explained, “Some of them work solely at the juice bar, some of them work at the juice bar and the salon, and some do aesthetics and also do events and catering for the juice bar.” Kawryga says she self-financed both businesses. The synergy is more than simply functional. Kawryga sees her two businesses as sharing a common spiritual philosophy, which is reflected in the name Soul Society. “All the girls that work at the salon as artists were just very into the universe and alignment, soul family: the idea that people that are in your life now you’ve known in other lives and you reconnect for a greater purpose,” Kawryga said. “Like you go away to learn and get experience and then you come back together. So, when I wanted to open my second business, I was like: Soul Society — a society of souls.” As the owner of two downtown businesses and a Syracuse native, Kawryga is upbeat about downtown’s future. She said, “I feel like I’ve seen new things popping up everywhere. A lot of women-owned [businesses] as well. So, I love to see that. I feel like we’re getting a lot of different things.” As to her own business future, Kawryga has considered expanding into a second location, adding that there “is nothing on paper yet,” but she has had some ideas that would likely focus on wellness-themed juice bars and events. In the meantime, Kawryga and the staff of her two businesses are enjoying their success in the West Genesee Street location. She reflected, “I feel like we’re just doing our own thing and we’re creating something that’s kind of just grown organically.”